Tommy Cookers wrote: β04 Mar 2021, 13:42
(yes I do write this stuff for my own gratification ....)
when McLaren c.1966 destroked for 3 litre F1 the Indy Ford (already over-valved and over-ported) it was useless ...
till they 'puckered their velocity stack'/reduced the intake size using iirc Charger bits - making it only semi-useless
and .....
for about 40 years I was unaware of any canted-valve 6
(though c.1970 asked about Hemis when as a 'temp' handling orders at Chrysler International)
British motorcycles were pushrod-hemi for 70+ years .... but ....
rocker/pushrod geometry (for commonality with side-valve relatives) loaded and wore valve guides and then valves
as did 700cc ('motorcycle-engined') BMW cars and 300cc BMW Isetta 'bubble-cars'
(the 250 BSA and the Vincent had proper pushrod layouts)
the canted-valve presumably avoided this .....
as presumably did for the 50ish years the British also made 'true' pushrod hemi-head cars ......
Riley, Lea-Francis, Bristol (BMW design), Armstrong-Siddeley, and Daimler 'Jaguar' V8s ..... and .....
'forgotten' but quite numerous ...the Humber Super Snipe of 1958-1967 (also assembled in Australia and NZ)
mostly an 87.3 x 82.5 3 litre of 130-140ish hp related to the 3.4/4 litre Armstrong-Siddeley but lighter etc block
(the 6 cyl Armstrong-Siddeley was 90 x 90 and beefier 4 litre 97 x 90)
but Chrysler took over the Rootes Group (including Humber) in 1964
(and inherited the Sunbeam Tiger using the Ford Detroit smallblock V8 !!)
the Humber was a heavier car than the Chrysler Valiant derivatives
the Humber brand was applied to smaller Rootes cars of non-Humber origin - and outlived the above 'true' Humber
The Humber Super Snipe 6 earned a good reputation downunder, esp' in NZ, once wrested from
executives & farmers - & to be head-skimmed to run on hi-test petrol - plus carb/exhaust mod's.
I recall reading a late 1980s mass road-test presentation of BMW cars being run in the alpine roads
of NZ's South Island, & the foreign journalists being amazed how hard an ancient Brit could be
punted up & out of tight, twisting climbs & how the latest luxury BMW's were so ah, humbled...
I always thought it was a shame that Peugeot never doubled their slant-block 404 hemi into a V8 to
match the British Daimler,(just as M-B later 'double sixed' their Cosworth DOHC 4V head 6, into a V12).
AFAIR, Edward Turner saw the twin-cam short-pushrod hemi-head Riley as 'inspiration' for his Triumph
twin motorcycle engines, & later, as part of the BSA organisation, then pushed Jaguar into buying
Daimler, since their hemi pushrod V8s could show-up the pukka DOHC 6 Jaguar engines - albeit Jag
durst not fit/sell the big one - & typically, put inordinate effort into their big OHC V12, instead.